Wednesday, June 12, 2013

The Bengaluru Question and Answer session that
followed my YUDH performance inspires me to write this. It was, as
always, an intense and exhilarating experience interacting with the
audience of Bengaluru, more so than other cities. The Bengaluru
audience tends to have a wonderful mix. There are those that are
attending a Bharathanatyam show for the first time, there are expats
eager to learn about Indian culture, there are many that look for
meaningful entertainment. And there are dance teachers and performers
who come fully equipped with the technical expertise of the dance.

And therefore, given that the mix of the
audience is fairly equal in denomination from each of the groups I have
mentioned above, the expectations of the show tend to be diverse. While
there usually is no problem in addressing the lay audience, the expats,
or even connoisseurs who are not performers, it is the fourth group
that finds sometimes a lacuna in the purpose of a project such as YUDH.

YUDH, as its predecessors Music Within and
Soul Cages, is aimed at showcasing the brilliance of Bharathanatyam to
an audience that at large finds little of interest in this art form.
This could include people who have attended traditional concerts and
upped their score on Angry Birds in the midst of the concert! The
Alarippu-Varnam-Padam-Thillana combination is strangely enough the same
format that is responsible for slaughtering the interest of a majority
of the the audience.

And yet, nine times out of ten (words of a
gentleman at the Bengaluru Yudh show), the performances are used to
project how well the dancer executes Mathematical footwork, geometric
shapes and patterns, coverage of surface area of stage, and other such
matters of utterly earth shaking importance. Ask our "uninitiated"
Punjabi PR executive how well she followed the Mathematics and she would
groan - "why can't you guys just deliver a show, instead of taking me
back to school!"

Because, my dear Punjabi kudi, this is not
about entertainment. This is about showing off your technical prowess
to a band of your students and their families, and perhaps the students
of another dance faculty finalised under a mutual audience exchange
program; a group of dancers performing to a group of other dancers and
marvelling at the longevity of the art form!

YUDH is not for those dance colleagues who
come with the mind set of seeing a laundry list of check points to be
ticked off that will attest my proficiency. And in any case, no one
other than that dancer or their student can ever satisfy this laundry
list.

In the 80s some elders in my house would
moan that the cricketer Kris Srikkanth was an aberration when juxtaposed
with the technical master Sunil Gavaskar across from him in the crease.
Technical mastery was all very well; it got India 36 runs from his bat
unbeaten in 60 overs. India lost. But, what technique!

We are not Mathematicians. We are
entertainers. Technique is a given. Beyond a point, the obsession with
technique would follow the law of diminishing returns, taking away from
the entertainment quotient. To grab the interest of the audience, you
need to have far more than technique. Wake up.

We have just premiered YUDH at NCPA Mumbai, and are
on the verge of taking it to the other cities programmed on the tour –
Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Bangalore, New Delhi and Chennai. The responses
in Mumbai have astounded us; while we were confident on our new
production’s appeal, we had not realized the extent to which it would
affect the audience till we met with them after the show.

However, one question that seemed to be
simmering in the minds of the press and the audience has been, ‘Is this
story written to address the horrific incident of the rape of the young
medical student in New Delhi? Is this a voice of protest against the
issues of gender that exist in the country?’

Allow us to clarify. This story was written
in April 2012, eight months before the rape incident in New Delhi. In
fact by December, the production, as the audience of NCPA saw it, was
ready to hit the stage. However, what disturbed us the most was that
this story could be found relevant to the rape incident. If we performed
it two years later, it would probably be relevant to some other similar
and horrendous incident. In fact, at any point in time that we can
think of, there seems to be always some incident that shakes our worlds,
and leaves us wondering, the victim did not deserve this…what kind of
divinity rules us that allowed this to occur. Will there ever be an end
to this?

But that view is one perspective…that of
the humans who have been given the freedom of choice and its
consequences, whether we wanted it or not. The story of YUDH looks at
these incidents from three perspectives, all of which could be equally
true or untrue depending on what the viewer takes away from it.

Our earlier production, ‘Soul Cages’ was a
cry of angst, a rant against the concept of heaven, as we know it. YUDH,
despite all its angst, however is not a rant. It is an attempt to
understand and find some rationality in what we all go through. In that
sense, it is more of a journey of discovery than a protest.

Many, many people go through tragedies that
they do not deserve at all. Yes, the rape incident at New Delhi shook
us up, jaded as we may have been with such nightmarish tales that
populate our news channels and papers at only too regular intervals.
However, these travesties occur across genders, and across the world.
Justice in human courts, as we learn it, seems reactive. It (sometimes)
punishes the perpetrators. But has it really stopped these incidents
from happening?

We are discovering for ourselves that
‘justice’ is a word being substituted for ‘punishment’. The word justice
would seem to suggest that good people should never have to go through
such travesties inflicted by other humans. But whether God or Satan
understand justice the same way that we do, is the question that we
think answers the ‘why’, that we as humans ask.

As one of the principle characters in YUDH
says at one point, “I don’t have all the answers. In fact, I have no
answers. Sometimes, we just accept that not everything has to have an
answer.”

"The idea of transactions between bodies, and between
bodies and performing space.... A linear non-narrative that moves from
one transition to another with an intention to blur the lines of
emotionality... To move the emotional from the tangible subjective to an
intangible objective"

The above lines describe a highly
intellectual and evocative description of a much "acclaimed" work that
has played across the country. It left us perplexed. Here we are,
graduates from distinguished Universities that have negotiated our paths
in the world to achieve what we deem, a success born out of old
fashioned values such as intelligence and hard work. We actually prided
ourselves on an above average intellect! And that description made us
realize how mediocre our intellect was. In plain speak, it made as much
sense as equations describing a black hole to a non-physicist.

Words such as the above and the pieces that
were played out assaulted our sense of self-esteem in quick succession
as we tried our hardest to appreciate art of this nature. This is the
usually seen version of contemporary dance.

So, is art meant to be the domain of the
masses? Or the exclusive realms inhabited by God's chosen few who could
understand the proceedings and better still appreciate it? This is a
question that has been asked possibly since the beginning of art itself.
It is asked of art in all it's forms - be it dance, music, cinema,
sculpture, paintings, ... in fact any aural or visual media that is
produced to evoke a reaction. There is the commercially popular, that
is lapped up by the masses and crucified by the connoisseurs. Take a
look at an average Salman Khan release and you will know what we mean.
And yet, the connoisseurs themselves dream ovations and packed houses. A
strange brew of intellectuals that also swear by democracy!

The notion that their art is not understood
by the masses simply signifies that they are far too "subtle" and
"sophisticated" for the layman to understand. In fact, if understood by
the masses, it must be childishly simple and awkward in its treatment.
"Something wrong there. That makes the masses equal to me. That cannot
be!" So goes the opinion of the self-declared cognoscenti.

In our encounters with the "masses" in our
question and answer sessions which followed the Soul Cages performances,
we stood humbled, NOT by their blinding intellectual posturing, but by
their simplicity and openness. They were not wordsmiths nor masters of
the abstract. But they were capable of logical thinking and possessed
an ability to discern depth in simplicity. Not obscuring the inane into
a vortex of intellectualism. Sometimes a simple story is meant to be
just that- simple!

Give us the honest men and women of the
street any day. Those high flying sophisticates have plenty to choose
from. The only criticism we take seriously is from the audience that
represents what we are - every day people.

Originally Published July 23, 2012
Last fortnight saw us in two cities that could not have been more
different had we consciously endeavored to make it so. The first city
that I speak of is Kandy, a picturesque town on the foot hills of the
grand tea plantation region in Sri Lanka. The second, a very affluent
'planned city' on the foothills of Shimla - Chandigarh.

Soul Cages was not scheduled to be performed at Kandy. The earnest
requests that came in from the President of GOPIO convinced us to
extend our tour of Colombo to Kandy. Kandy is a small town (by Indian
standards), tucked away in the heart of Sri Lanka. The town draws quite
a few tourists that visit the Temple of the Tooth Relic, and then
proceed to Nuwara Eliya - arguably the Switzerland of Sri Lanka. The
residents of Kandy however, invoked in us a sense of being in a small
town in Tamil Nadu, much like Madurai or Coimbatore. Earnest and hard
working, the city wakes up very early and carries with it an air of
purpose embedded in a laid back atmosphere. These are people of the
soil who believe in a hard day's work and in the values of educating
their children to give them a better future. The scars of the years of
civil conflict still show in unlikeliest ways and yet, people are trying
to put the past behind them and move on. They radiate a beauty that
outshines Nuwara Eliya.

The President of GOPIO, Mr. Devarajan, saw me perform
Soul Cages at Colombo, and when he met me after the show, he was
perturbed. He was unsure whether the audience of Kandy would be able to
understand or appreciate anything that Soul Cages portrayed. He felt
that the Colombo crowd was more intellectual and therefore related to
the presentation completely. "The audience of Kandy had no pretentious
of any sophistication and may not be able to comprehend it", he said.

His views did not disturb us as we were confident that
the show would be understood. Over dinner in Colombo, we however wrote a
synopsis of Soul Cages for Mr. Devarajan so that he could translate it
toTamil. At midnight Mr.Devarajan personally wrote out a wonderfully
floral translation which was read out to the Kandy audience before the
show.

The effect on the Kandy audience was electric. Every scene
was applauded and the audience became a part of the performance. In the
question and answer session following the show, the audience talked to
us. Simple and naive they might have been, but they understood every
nuance, explained or otherwise.

A few days later I was in Chandigarh performing Soul Cages.
Chandigarh is one tenth the size of Kandy in area, and has ten times
the population of Kandy! A city that has the distinction of being
India’s richest city on a per capita basis, and arguably India’s
cleanest city as well, it was the kind of city which one would imagine
would resonate well with the philosophical imports of Soul Cages. The
Tagore Theater, venue of the show, is a beautiful structure in Sector
18, and holds a proud heritage of having been inaugurated by Pandit
Jawaharlal Nehru, and having had the thespian Prithaviraj Kapoor amongst
its Board.

The audience at Chandigarh comprised mostly of families of
retired armed forces officers, business men, and professionals from the
corporate world. An audience that was very well read, that completely
related to shows with a philosophical edge, and was a connoisseur of art
in general. The applause through the show was muted, which we realized
later was only because the audience was following the drama unfold with
complete attention. The effect was no different from Kandy. Yes the
audience used more erudite adjectives to describe their emotions, but
the emotions were the same.

Mr.Devarajan's fears that this sort of an artistic
expression was more appreciated by the gentry than the common man were
unfounded. True art does not discriminate on the basis of education or
bank balances. I was much struck by what I heard from two mothers. A
woman in Kandy said to us that she had experienced loss of a child and
was able to gain some perspective on her loss after viewing Soul Cages.
A mother in Chandigarh told us that the experience had left her better
placed to explain 'life and death' to her daughter. A Muslim member
from the audience at Colombo was so awestruck that he convinced his
family to view the show in Kandy. A Christian woman in the audience
could not stop her tears, just as a Hindu business magnate in Chandigarh
couldn't.

Rukmini Devi Arundale, arguably the leader of the
renaissance movement of Bharathanatyam in the 1930s, would have
disagreed with the title I have chosen to speak on. In her words,
Bharathanatyam is eternal and therefore it's relevance lies beyond time.
In a purely logical fashion, if I was to agree to the eternity of the
dance form, by default what I say is- its relevance in modern times is
the same as its relevance in the time of the devadasis, the time of
Rukmini Devi Arundale, and will be the same for the next million years.
However, as a practitioner of this dance form, I can speak from my
personal experience and that of others that the relevance in these times
is entirely different from the relevance in the time of the devadasis
or any other time in the past. Am I challenging the eternity of the
dance form?

I am at the moment reading a book by
Stephen Batchelor, a Scottish gentleman who became ordained as a monk in
Tibet at the age of 20 years, titled 'Confessions of a Buddhist
Atheist'. While the book has no direct relevance to my seminar topic,
there is a quote in it that struck me as intriguing and pertinent. He
says with relevance to Buddhism, and I quote, " Whenever there is a
religion that is embodied in a culturally and historically alien form
attempts to find its footing in a new culture and time, it is necessary
that its concepts and symbols undergo a restructuring in order to attune
with the prevailing spirit of the times". As I was reading over these
lines, it struck me that I could have replaced the word 'religion' with
'dance style' and this sentiment would ring just as true to
Bharathanatyam as it does to Buddhism. I am challenging neither the
eternity of Bharathanatyam nor Buddhism.

For those of you in the audience not very
familiar with this dance form, Bharathanatyam is alluded to have about
two thousand years of traceable history and was practiced by a sect of
women called 'devadasis' - literally translated reads as - 'servants of
the Gods'. The devadasis belonged to a matrilineal community and while
they flourished from the patronage of King's and wealthy upper class,
they did not have to abide by marriage or social conventions expected of
other women that might have distracted their practicing and preserving
this art form. The current solo dance repertoire that you see the
students and artists of this tradition perform world over draws from the
organizing, detailing, and refining that this dance style underwent in
the hands of four brothers - Ponniah, Chinniah, Sivanandam, and Vadivelu
in the Thanjavur courts in the 1800s. The devadasis practiced this
style of rendition and while their history has been marred from the
contextual social changes that India as a country went through, the art
form itself has surprisingly undergone little change in the spirit of
its practice.

There has always been a very high premium
placed on associating all aspects of the Bharathanatyam practice with
religion and devotion to God. Even if the lines of music draw from
highly erotic and sensual poetry, the emphasis, as it has been taught to
me and thousands before me, is to find my human frailties drawn not to
the physical realm, but to God, in spirit and in surrender. And I am
sure I am not the first person to have questioned this deeply and unable
to reconcile as a teenager learning these pieces, and understanding how
I would portray on stage these highly erotic dances, without feeling
violated and exposed. Rukmini Devi Arundale who is reputed for reviving
this art form in the 1930s when it passed through the darkest hours of
shame and abandonment, emphasized that if the spirit of devotion reigns
supreme, then the dancer and audience should experience communion with
the divine, even if the subject of the pieces remained highly erotic. I
am the student of Rukmini Devi's direct disciples - Adyar K. Laxman and
Dhanajayans who hail from her institution - Kalakshetra in Chennai.
Yes, I practice a more refined technique than my devadasi predecessor
and yes, some of the words, meaning, and emphasis in what I dance in my
solo repertoire have been shifted to become more dignified. And yet,
something rankled in me. Perhaps I was not a good student. My
ruminations on this continued.

Now, as long as we accept Bharathanatyam to
be a dance form, we are on safe grounds. A dance form is a medium that
we use to portray ideas and stories to an audience. The ideas and
stories may change, but the dance form itself is a matter of style. A
dance form is essentially a set of moves defined by a code of 'what can
be' and identifies a graceful set of gestures and kinetics. What is
eternal is divine. A code of how to move is hardly divine. The idea of
what can be done with it is probably far more thought provoking.
When I speak about the relevance, what I mean is whether
ideas and stories relevant to today's times can be expressed through
Bharathanatyam or is this way of telling stories defunct? What most
critics and performers tend to do is take the safe path. They tell a
story that has been said since the time of the devadasis and give it the
name of culture. A dwindling interest in the art form is blamed on the
audience. Since there is hardly anything novel about the stories, the
challenge is in who performs it the best. Critics tend to appreciate
how well a certain person moved, how gracefully they enacted the story,
and how Bharathanatyam lived on. Hardly, I would think! A very small
audience attends, a good percentage of them leave in between, and many
of those who stay behind are on their iPhones and blackberries. Who
does one blame? The audience. They just aren't the same anymore. I
performed the Padams, the Varnams, the keertanas, and the thillanas.
Nothing more I could do! This is the attitude that is ensuring that
Bharathanatyam, as it is widely practiced in the solo tradition has
little chance of having any relevance in the modern world. The hubris
of the performer and the inability and/or disinclination to adapt or
change is the issue that needs to be addressed. In this Rukmini Devi
Arundale would have whole heatedly supported us.

Let me elaborate on why I say that the
themes presented in these typical, traditional margams are not relevant.
In the days of the devadasis, they had dance in front of prospective
investors or clients who assured them of some degree of financial
support in return for exclusive favors. In very thinly disguised
allusions, stories of a highly erotic nature would be played using
Bharathanatyam in a bid to entice a prospective patron.
When Rukmini Devi tried to revive the art form, she
substituted the allusion to the patron with an allusion to a God. What
do we have as a result? We have Radha telling Krishna in 'Kuruyadu
Nandana', a Jayadeva's ashtapathi - "Come and apply Sandal paste to the
bruises on my body that I bear from the night of love-making" or in
Pattanam's 'Samayamide ra ra' - the heroine exclaims "Oh Krishna, my
darling, come to me now, why do you delay when this is the opportune
time. My husband is not in town and my in laws do not interfere. Come
and be with me now - let not this opportune time pass away wasted!"

At least the devadasis were frank about
what they were asking for. What we have here is the impression that the
Gods we revere are all about physicality, with some vague attempt made
to tell us that we will find divinity through these pranks of Krishna.
We have succeeded in reducing Krishna to the human susceptibilities and
frailties. We haven't given him much to be esteemed for. And oh the
number of repetitions! In hundred performers, 75% would involve a tale
of a Krishna and a Nayika, and the rest have some connection to a
mythological tale that has been told and retold through the centuries.
When this is performed on stage in today's times, the
audience either does not understand, or thinks of it as some relic from
the past, or has been brainwashed into believing this is spirituality
and hence Radha's sufferings because Krishna is with a neighbor's wife
is viewed as difficulties in the path to God. It is rationalization
and a very poor one at that. It is not the fault of the dance form. It
is the fault of the clique that refuses to change. And that which does
not change cannot be eternal. For eternity, change is a device. It is
evident in evolution and everything you see or don't see around you.
The change that we ask for is not in the kinetics of the
form. It is what you use the form to speak. If that is relevant, then
the art form is relevant. If that is archaic, the art form is dead.‪‪

The way to keep tradition alive is to embrace change.
Sri and I found that meaningful change does not come easy. On one
hand is an inertia which makes us believe what is, has been, will
remain. The other end of the spectrum believes in change for no reason
other than change itself. And as we are discovering, neither is
sustainable.
We aren’t your traditional bloggers. We tend to be far
too private resonating our innermost thoughts only between ourselves.
So, why are we here? We are, because sometimes a meandering
conversation ignites a fuse and leads to an explosion of ideas that we
just had to share. In these pages you will find such thoughts.
We have no personal biases against the multitude of
thought-forms. We are as captive to our lines of thought as others
along this spectrum. Some of you may agree, others may not; we would be
delighted nevertheless to hear from you on your opinions.
This is all about change. When we don’t do it, nature does it
for us. The fat history books are made of such stuff!

Follow my blog and receive new posts by Email

Savitha and Srikanth

The Bloggers

Savitha and Srikanth are partners committed to many things; they range from artistic endeavors through their production company Sai Shree Arts, to the color of curtains in their house. Savitha comes with a very strong grounding in Bharathanatyam, the Indian classical dance form, with a vision malleable enough to be able to use the art form in unconventional ways. She is constantly seeking her nirvana through her dance and her productions. Srikanth is a cultural nomad who believes in the beauty of Bharathanatyam, but is not completely convinced about its relevance as performed today. His intuitiveness on what is intelligent and meaningful to an audience has formed the backbone of his work as a writer. Together Savitha and Srikanth make for the duo that not just theorizes on the need to make Bharathanatyam relevant at this age, but also bring it life with their productions such as ‘Music Within’ (2010), ‘Soul Cages’ (2012), 'YUDH' (2013), 'The Prophet' (2013), and 'Chains' (2015). Write to us at admin@savithasastry.com